If there are guitars in heaven

+ a note on grief

This year feels flooded by grief.

Can you relate?

I’ve heard from several parents over the past couple of weeks who have lost children to substance use disorder or other tragedies. They’ve told me how they’ve connected with this letter. Their tears are one of the reasons I keep writing.

In the small town where I live in Eastern Tennessee, over the past two weeks, we’ve also experienced a series of youth overdose deaths due to Fentanyl.

Your tears are one of the reasons I keep writing.

*

In my own personal life, I’ve also experienced loss. My father last September and most recently my uncle Dee. In my small town in Eastern Tennessee, I’ve heard of at least two funerals of young people who’ve been killed by Fentanyl.

Grief has pulled up a chair [again] at the table.

He is bidding me to come and write. To explore what it means to grieve and what it means to be fully human.

To feel it.

As

Rachel Marie Kang

shares in her latest book, The Matter of Little Losses: Finding Grace to Grieve the Big (and Small) Things:

It is the communal words, not just communal wounds, that stitch our souls together in strength. It’s communal movement, action, expression, and prayer that brings us together, bond us together.

My stepbrother texted that morning in March and told me that our uncle had passed.

Memories of Dee flooded my mind. Of Chicago suburbs and railroad tracks, of summer barbecues and the Beatles and short man-shorts with high white socks.

I thought, too of my father, who’s passing more than 6 months ago now, impacts every new event. Every celebration, every holiday, every new death. His absence triggered by any momentous day. Any day at all. Like today.

Back in the 80s and early 90s, my dad and my uncle used to strum guitars together and jam late into the night. Music’s flames were fanned by cheap beer and tobacco and the smell of Old Spice and July. I’m not sure where we slept when we stayed overnight during those family parties, but if I close my eyes I can feel the brownish-orange shag carpeting of his house on my skin. The smell of old macrame. The way when I walked by a mirror I was too young to care.

My dad (with my brother on his lap), Uncle Dee and Uncle Richard circa 1988 or so.

Later in his life, Dee had a series of strokes that took from him everything he loved one by one: work, music, movement. In the end, he was confined to a wheelchair, could barely speak, and hadn’t been able to conform a gripping hand around a guitar neck for years.

Sometimes at family gatherings, I’d watch him watching the world moving around him, the family, the noise, the movement.

What was it like to miss these simple acts of living that most of us take for granted every second? I made it a point to say hello, to sit, to hold his hand for a minute, to look him in the eye. Sometimes it was uncomfortable. I don’t remember the way he was before all of the body breaking down. Sometimes I couldn’t understand him. Sometimes I didn’t know what to say.

But I sat, and sometimes silent. And in a strange way that felt like enough. Just to be present. To be there.

If there are guitars in heaven, I’d like to think that my dad and Dee are jamming out right now. Black Bird, Suzie Q, Rocky Raccoon, That’ll be the Day. I’d like to think that those things we might lose in this life, come back to us as gifts there.

One of my favorite new devotionals called “You are the Beloved” which has excerpts from Henri Nouwen, said this on March 24, the day that Dee died:

Be Surprised by Joy

Learn the discipline of being surprised not by suffering but by joy. As we grow old…there is suffering ahead of us, immense suffering, a suffering that will continue to tempt us to think that we have chosen the wrong road…But don’t be surprised by pain. Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flow that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.¹

While he suffered and lost the capacity for much of what it means to be independent by our standards in today’s world, my uncle moved to a place of complete and utter dependence. It was in this dependence that the result of our humanity could be seen playing out in real time. And the fruit of his faith.

[…] God is with you in your grief, giving space for sorry, welcoming you as you slowly find your way. He greets you in your grief before going on to glory, to heaven. He waits with you as you grope and groan for words that give language to loss—all those little and large. He stops and stoops, lays low, right there with you in the suspension of all things. He blesses you even in your brokenness, even as you beg for kingdom come. -

Rachel Marie Kang

When Dee lay dying in the hospice bed, surrounded by friends and family, I imagine my dad there assuring him. I imagine he was working through spiritual battles, I imagine he was coming to peace with surrender. I imagine he was saying goodbye. I imagine there were guitars.

Photo by Mohrez Labaf on Unsplash

Have you been moved by grief in this season?

I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email or comment below.

1. Nouwen, H. J. M. (2017). You are the beloved: daily meditations for spiritual living. Convergent Books.